I'm a who needs help choosing a distribution:

I am a desktop user currently running RedHat 9.0, but don't know how to communicate with my window$ partition to import my existing data (about 1.3gb). Also it does not support my Motorola SM56 modem.

I've been thinking about lycoris to ease the transition (I don't really agree with the motto: Linux is for everyone?!?).

I'm not concerned about support, I only want stability (my computer has crashed 4 times in the last 5 years- courtesy Micro$oft) and extensibility (Linux is my long-term answer).

Any suggestions? I can't really commit the time for trouble shooting every other error.

Where is the drive that you want to get the data from (primary master, secondary master.....). If it is on the same drive as linux, what does you partiion table look like?

Hi pariksheet

To get access to your Windows data from Linux you'll have to mount your Windows partition.

For a temporary mount to test - as an example - Windows is on a FAT32 /dev/hda 1st partition and the mount point is /mnt/windows


mount -t vfat -o rw /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows

For NTFS

mount -t ntfs -o ro /dev/hda1 /mnt/windows


you 'll have to substitute in your Windows partition and the mount poi t youve created ect

I would reccomend Mandrake 9.1

You can check out all the various Linux distribution at Distrowatch - the link is in my sig, at the bottom

Device Start End Size (MB) Type
^ /dev/hdc
^ hdc2 2436 4870 19101 Extended
hdc5 2436 4870 19101 ext3
hdc1 1 2435 19101 fat32


I was looking at Mandrake 9.1

Would you recommend Gentoo, since the capacity to learn would greatly help me as well?

Gentoo is difficult to install if your new to Linux - Personally I'd go with Mandrake 9.1

Forgive me, Skyline, but where exactly do I type this command?

Open a terminal

type

su -
type your root password

create a mount point in your /mnt directory with

mkdir /mnt/windows

then type the code - REMEMBER to substitute in the correct info regarding the drive its on - the partition - and the mount point name.

To mount the fat32 partition goto the commandline.

First type:
mkdir /mnt/windows
This make the windows directory to mount the fat32 partition.

second type:
mount -t vfat -o rw /dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows
This mounts the partition to /mnt/windows

All your data will be in /mnt/windows directory.

Thanks guys! I got my stuff!

But how do I permanently mount the directory onto my file system?

You have to edit your /etc/fstab. Put a line in it that looks like this.

/dev/hdc1 /mnt/windows vfat defaults 0 0